
*o 






^^0^ 



^oV^ 



<i- 



H ^■ 





^0 "«^ *o;o' o, 







.V 




.0 ^^^^ 



V 



> . t • o . ■'^ . O^ , s • • ^ 



0* . 



> .«/ .>.:^,i:%, >. .^^r:.?^ij^^ ' 






-^ 



A 



'A<b- 






<e^ 

■^ 





4 c 



'-f 



-"^^^'^ 



'•V 


0^ 






/ 


°<. 


r 


'■^' 


f ' 


• 0^ 








^ 


• 


■^^ 




C/^ 


'l'^o 






_E/^ 


^ 


\P - 




p 







ADDRESSES 



BY 



EDWARD T. TUCKER, M. D., 



AND 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 



At the Exercises held in the 
FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE AT SANDWICH, MASSACHUSETTS 

10 Mo. 10, 1907 



On the 250th Anniversary of the Establishment of a Meeting of the 

Society of Friends in Sandwich, the earliest meeting of 

that denomination in America. 



"It 



.5r 



W. y. Pub. Lib. 

Jill li i9uy 




FRIENDS' MEETING HOUSE AT SANDWICH, MASS. 
1907 



Address by Edward T. Tucker, M. D., 

of New Bedford. 

In the Seventh month, 1658, a pathetic letter issued from 
the jail in Boston, addressed to Margaret Fell, that remarkable 
woman, who was to be in coming years the wife of George Fox, 
the founder of the Society, of whose principles the youthful 
writer was at this date an earnest advocate. John Rouse, whose 
hand indited this letter, was ultimately to become the son-in- 
law of the woman by whom this epistle was received. He was 
the son of a wealthy sugar planter of Barbadoes, and in com- 
pany with Humphrey Norton, another gospel messenger, had, 
at an earlier date in this year, been whipped and committed to 
jail at Plymouth, for a refusal to take the oath, the records of 
the court alluding to them as two of those called Quakers. 

In the long and detailed missive, which was perused with 
painful interest by Margaret Fell, filled with incidents depict- 
ing the sufferings of those, who were travelling in the service 
of Truth upon the soil of the new world, her eye fell upon the 
following lines near the close, which fall also upon our ears 
with renewed interest on this occasion — "We have two strong 
places in this land, the one at Newport in Rhode Island, and 
the other at Sandwich ; which the enemy will never get domin- 
ion over." 

Nearly, if not quite, two hundred and fifty years have 
passed away since these lines were written, to be read again 
and again in subsequent time. 

What led John Rouse to make this statement ? Simply his 
appreciation of, and testimony to, the courage, faithfulness, and 
self-sacrifice of the families in this town of Sandwich, who 
adopted, upheld and defended the principles and testimonies 
of the new sect. 

We are informed that the meeting at Sandwich arose in 
the year 1657. By the year following quite a proportion of the 
hitherto Puritan community had identified itself with 
"Friends." The meeting was gathered through the instrumen- 
tality of John Copeland and Christopher Holder, who were the 
first gospel messengers to visit the toAvn. Report went out 



shortly, that nearly the entire town was adhering to the 
Quakers, and thus the foundation was laid for a large and 
flourishing Monthly Meeting of Friends. 

We are standing this afternoon upon historical ground, 
hallowed by precious memories, at this beautiful season of the 
3^ear, when nature is lavish in her display of field and forest, hill 
and dale and distant ocean. The same waves murmur upon 
the beach, the same sea coast stretches before our sight, the 
blue sky, as of old, shuts in our limited vision, but the faithful 
few who built the foundations for the superstructure, which 
yet remains, are long since gone. 

It was at. or near, this spot, this old Spring Hill in Sand- 
wich, that the meeting was gathered. It is not for me to point 
out, or identify any particular spot, which marks the home- 
stead or abiding place of any of the forefathers, the original 
members of the meeting. I could not, if I desired, but will 
leave that to some native of the town, and will rather attempt 
to commemorate the appreciation which Sandwich Quarterly 
Meeting may have for the Friends, who were the prime movers 
in the establishment of the Monthly Meeting, a few ycai's af'tin* 
the setting up of :i nu'cting for worsliiix 

Thuier the roof of AVilliam Allen were lu'ld tlie first m('('liii<is 
and John Copeland and Christopher Holder, after their first 
appearance, were arrested, arraigned before the court at Ply- 
mouth, and banished from the colony. Coming again in the 
fourth month, 1658, they were apprehended, and not feeling 
clear to leave, when so commanded, were transported to Barn- 
stable, received at the latter town 33 lashes each, and were 
carried off in the direction of Rhode Island. 

It is worthy of note that we have ample evidence for be- 
lieviiig that several of the substantial and influential dwellers 
in Sandwich were becoming uneasy and dissatisfied with their 
relationship to their own church and its government, even be- 
fore the representatives of the Society of Friends appeared 
withm their borders. As Nicholas Upsal in Boston had been 
seeking a more spiritual experience and had entertained a 
feeling of dissatisfaction toward the Puritan rule and worship, 
and was thus prepared to welcome Mary Fisher and Anne 
Austin, the first Friends to arrive in the colonies and uphold 
them at iiis own peril, a proceeding which led to his banishment 
from that city, so in like manner, the people in this town of 
the old Plymouth Colony welcomed John Copeland and Chris- 



topher Holder to their hearts and firesides, as exponents of a 
purer faith and a more spiritual worship. 

Nicholas Upsal was in Sandwich, as a fugitive, as early as 
February, 1657, for in that month this aged and faithful man 
was complained of before the court at Plymouth, together with 
Richard Kirby, the wife of John Newland, and a few others, for 
meeting at William Allen's house on the Lord's Day, and in- 
veighnig against ministers and magistrates, to the dishonor of 
God and contempt of government. At this late day we well 
understand the character of such meetings and the utter inabil- 
ity of the average Puritan to comprehend them and their actual 
significance. The gulf between such minds as those of George 
Fox and Increase Mather could not be closed in a month, a 
decade or a half century. Witness, for instance, the sentence 
pronounced upon Ralph Allen in October, 1657, on the 6th of 
the month, nearly 250 years ago to a day, when he was ordered 
to find securities for his good behavior, because he had enter- 
tained divers persons at his house, and was guilty of other mis- 
demeanors — a sentence which he refused to abide by and was 
hence committed to the custody of the marshal. 

Peter Gaunt, Daniel Wing, Ralph Allen, Jr., and William 
Allen were summoned to court in the following spring for 
tumultuous carriage at a meeting of Quakers in Sandwich, and 
though the charge was not proven, the baffled magistrate was 
reluctant to acquit them, without an evidence of hostility, and 
hence fined them each 20 shillings for not removing their hats 
in the court room. 

On June 1, 1658, Robert Harper, Ralph Allen, Jr., John 
Allen, Thomas Greenfield, Edw. Perry, Richard Kirby, Jr., Wil- 
liam Allen, Thomas Ewer, Wm. Gifford, George Allen, Jc, 
Matthew Allen, Daniel Wing, John Jenkins, Jr., and Geo. Webb, 
all of Sandwich, were summoned, and gave their reasons for 
refusing to take the oath. At a subsequent court, the greater 
number of them were fined £5 each. 

On October 6, 1659, Barlow, the marshal, was ordered to 
search the houses of William Newland and Ralph Allen, in the 
town, also that of Nicholas Davis in Barnstable, for papers and 
writings which were false and poisonous to the government. 

We need not be told that the fines levied upon these faith- 
ful sufferers were not paid. We readily understand that they 
would undergo imprisonment, but could not consistently or 
conscientiously pay them. 



Mary Dyer and William Leddra, who were eventually to lay 
down their lives at Boston, appear to have visited their brethren 
here, with messages of cheer and sympathy. 

The latter was imprisoned, with Peter Pearson, at Ply- 
mouth, for several months in the latter part of 1659, and a 
portion of the year ensuing. 

On October 2, 1660, Robert Harper and wife, John Newland 
and wife, Joseph Allen, Benjamin Allen, Wm. Allen, Wm. Gif- 
forcl, Matthew Allen, the wife of Henry Dillingham, Wm. New- 
land and wife, Peter Gaunt, Obadiah Butler, Dorothy Butler, 
John Jenkins, Richard Kirby, Richard Kirby, Jr., were fined, 
each 10 shillings, for being at Quaker meetings. 

The four years, from 1657 to 1661, have been called the 
"dark ages" of New Plymouth, and this was true in a special 
sense for Friends in this section. A constable was appointed 
for the direct purpose to make distraints upon the goods of 
these conscientious sufferers, to satisfy fines levied at different 
terms of the court. Some of them were enormous when cir- 
cumstances were considered. Thus William Allen, who was 
reckoned a man of good estate, was almost ruined by the rapa- 
cious collector, who seized 18 of his cattle, besides articles of 
furniture. Edward Perry was a great sufferer, also William 
Gifford, and scarcely any one bearing the name of "Friend" 
escaped. As an aggravating case is cited that of Thomas John- 
son, a poor weaver, with a family of seven or eight children, 
from whom two cows, all that he had, were taken. 

It was in February, 1658, during this dismal period, that 
William Brend and John Copeland wxre whipped in this town, 
the former receiving 10 and the latter 22 lashes, yet so cruelly 
was the task performed, that Edward Perry declared boldly 
and outspokenly before the spectators and in the hearing of 
the magistrates, that he Avas there as an eye witness of the suf- 
ferings of the people of the Lord. In the following summer 
John Copeland and Christopher Holder were whipped at Barn- 
stable, and in the same year John Rouse and Humphrey Norton 
were treated to 15 lashes each at Sandwich, in a manner which 
Geo. Bishop, the historian, stated drew "store of blood." 

In the absence of records much detailed information as to 
the early years of the Sandwich meeting has failed of trans- 
mission to our day, and yet how much we long to know that is 
wrapped in oblivion. Among the first messengers from the old 
world, who came hither after Friends had arisen and become 



a separate people, was John Biirnyeat, who visited the flock 
in 1666 and again in 1672, having a few days before his second 
coming been a companion of George Fox, whom he left at 
Rhode Island. While Geo. Fox was in New England, Newport 
and Providence were especially favored by his presence, and 
one regrets today that no opportunity presented for him to visit 
Sandwich if only for a brief period. What a privilege this 
would have been to the Friends of this place ! He might have 
recorded in his excellent journal what we could read today 
with interest. 

We are not iuformed as to the exact time when the Monthly 
Meeting was organized, or when the first meeting house was 
built The written records appear soon after 1670 and the num- 
ber of members is conjectural. Bowden, the historian, speaks of 
eighteen families as identified with Friends in 1658, and we may 
assume a steady increase in years following at the present spot 
and at Falmouth and Yarmouth, which were included in the 
Monthly Meeting. Yet, in its best days, it never attained to 
the bize of the jMonthly Meetings at the westward, as Dart- 
mouth and Rhode Island. There was the difference between 
the chilling influence of the Plymouth colony and the hospitable 
atmosphere of the Rhode Island colony, whose activities cen- 
tered at Newport. 

Sandwich Monthly Meeting has coped with many obstacles 
and experienced many discouragements. Emigration has de- 
pleted its numbers continually. The descendants of Lodowick 
Hoxie, Thomas Ewer, Deborah Wing, William Gifford and 
others of the pioneers are scattered far and wide. Many names 
have disappeared. The Kirbys and Aliens eventually located 
in Dartmouth; the Giffords are found in greater numbers in 
New Bedford and nearby towns than here. The Perrys have 
disappeared and Rhode Island is the state of their abode. The 
Wings are numerous elsewhere. The name of Ewer is becoming 
rare. The Hoxies are also found in Maine, as "Friends," as 
well as the Wings, and it is said that Sidney Monthly Meeting 
in that state was originally composed of new comers from 
Sandwich. 

The first converts to the Society at Sandwich included, as 
the names which have been cited indicate, representatives of the 
best people in the town. I have no date to determine when 
the meetings at Falmouth and Yarmouth were established. It 
is interesting to note that in the latter years the Giffords and 



10 

Dillinghams have been more numerous in Falmouth than in the 
town where their ancestors settled, while the Hoxies, Wings 
and Ewers are more closely identified with Sandwich. 

If we consider that John Rouse spoke with prophetic im- 
port in liis hopeful remarks concerning the meeting at this 
place, we can take courage and feel that the end of this meet- 
ing has not yet arrived, for the problem that has confronted 
us has been not only the fear of the continuance of the local 
meeting but that of the ]\Ionthly Meeting as well. 

Few people realize the importance which Sandwich and its 
meeting had in the estimation of the early Friends, on both 
sides of the water. As the first meeting in America, it was a 
source of interest to every travelling minister. The thoughts 
of Christopher Holder after his return, frequently reverted to 
the scenes of his toil and sufferings. John Rouse, in his social 
life with George Fox and Margaret Fell, rehearsed his expe- 
riences and the name of "Sandwich" must have created in the 
mind of George Fox a peculiar interest when spoken in his 
presence. 

A beacon fire was kindled at this portion of the Cape which 
burned brightly in the passing years. The atmosphere is filled 
with memories of the past. The breezes of summer, the rustling 
leaves, the autumn foliage, the ripening harvests, the blue sky, 
the rolling ocean, the stormy winds of winter, repeat from year 
to year the story of the Friends at Sandwich, whose record has 
been placed upon imperishable tablets. 



Address by John H. Dillingham, 

of Philadelphia. 

It may well be regarded by us as a noteworthy, while a 
mysterious providence, that this Barnstable county of ours was 
the door-step for the entering into America of the two sets 
of pioneers of civil and religious liberty : — our Pilgrim Fathers 
at Provincetown, where was formed the first written compact 
of government embodying the germ of our constitution, and the 
two Quaker preachers landing at the diagonally opposite, or 
Falmouth corner of the county, who 250 years ago gathered 
a meeting of the Society of Friends here at Sandwich, a society 
whose members in the old colony broke, or wore out the arm of 
religious oppression for our whole country by their non- 
retaliating sufferings and passive resistance. To these Quakers 
we owe the final purchase of religious liberty by their blood , 
to the Provincetown Pilgrims of 11th Mo. 1620, who a month 
later became the Plymouth colony, we ascribe grateful gains 
indeed for religious liberty, and especially an effective planting 
of the principle of democracy. 

The present summer and autumn season has been a rare 
one for our country in its calls upon us for historic commemo- 
rations that are more than centennials, but reach up to the 
double or treble centenary rank. Jamestown is still reminding 
the world of its settlement of three himdred years ago this 
year. The land of Gosnold, represented by the Elizabeth Isles 
and my native town of Falmouth, almost forgot, had it not been 
reminded b}^ Jamestown, to set up as we did last summer a 
memorable celebration of its first, but soon unsettled settlement 
by Bartholomew Gosnold five years earlier than the beginning 
of Jamestown. Our Cape Cod, so named by Gosnold himself, 
at its very northern extremity was the scene last summer of the 
founding of the monument to the Pilgrim Fathers who first 
landed there, and the celebration was made the more memorable 
by the oration of the chief magistrate of the country and 
government to whose constitution those Pilgrims gave the 
initiative in that very Provincetown harbor, and made Presi- 
dent Roosevelt's speech possible. And now, we are assembled 
to recall a time just fifty summers since Jamestown was 



12 

founded, when those two notable pioneers of the Society of 
Friends in America cultivated its first field. Christopher 
Holder and John Copeland, being set ashore at the opposite 
corner of the county, found foothold in Sandwich to become 
at once our pioneers of the freedom of conscience and the free- 
dom of the Spirit, to sow the seed of the kingdom, wdiich is 
Christ the inspeakiug Word. 

I have said that they entered this peninsula by the Fal- 
mouth or Woods Hole shore of Vineyard sound, because in the 
absence of assured information otherwise, I do not see what 
other course Christopher Holder and John Copeland could have 
taken, when, compelled to leave Martha's Vineyard island, they 
were sent across the sound in a canoe paddled by an Indian. 
The nearest shore was that of Succanessett or Falmouth, and 
the most direct walk was through the forest to Sandwich. But 
here in the summer of 1657 they found the beginning of their 
mission. The field was white already to harvest. Their 
former pastor, William Leverich, had removed to Long Island. 
For four years they had been without a stated minister, — a 
good schooling towards Quakerism. A considerable number 
were possessed of the conviction that Christians should use 
their own gifts in the church. The two Friends found a pre- 
pared soil. The Master had gone before them into Galilee. 
The minister told in words what the Seed had been telling their 
hearts. By the spoken word the thoughts of many hearts were 
revealed. The Friends held meetings where they best could, — 
in private houses, as over here by this hill at William Allen's, 
and as tradition says, over there in the woods in Christopher's 
Hollow, — which the Society ought now to possess and protect 
from further desecration. Within that first year of the 
Friends' visit eighteen families were gathered into the Society 
of Friends. Eighteen families in Sandwich joined the society 
ten years before William Penn joined it. As years pass on we 
hear of sixty families ; then of an extension of membership into 
Yarmouth ; then into Falmouth, where a regular meeting was 
going on in 1685 ; and by the spreading of Friends, whether 
from this way or from that, a number of congregations were 
established on the other side of the bay even unto Rhode Island ; 
and all are comprehended under this one Quarterly Meeting of 
Sandwich, and to Sandwich some ten congregations still look 
as their historic centre. Shall their annual pilgrimages to this 
memorable hill, this mother-home of so many Friends' meetings 



13 

over a large county standing as worthy a monument of religious 
liberty in America, as the Provincetown hill is of civil liberty 
through the Pilgrims, be now set aside, and hallowed associ- 
ations that have spelled a witness for truth to our hearts be 
left in the lurch without even the tribute of an annual visit by 
a Quarterly Meeting ? Shall this Spring Hill, dignified for 
these two and a half centuries by the savor of the spirits of 
Holder and Copeland, of William and Ralph Allen, Edward 
Perry, Thomas Bowman, Daniel Wing, Timothy Davis, David 
Dudley, Benjamin Percival and patriarchs more than I can 
catalogue, beside figures of our own memory, like Joseph and 
Mercy K. Wing, Newell Hoxie, Presbury Wing, Joseph Ewer, 
Stephen and Elizabeth C. Wing, Lemuel Gifford, though they 
bore their treasure in earthen vessels, not continue to be a 
spring of memorial of the planting of truth in these parts, and 
a stimulus to its continuance in these hearts — hearts which in 
these our days need a recultivation of the now vanishing sense 
of veneration, and of reminders to sit as under the wing of 
ancient goodness? 

But sentiment is not religion, though so often made its 
substitute ; nor religion sentiment, though divinely productive 
of it. Yet sentiments evoked by the high standards of days 
that are past incite noble days' works in the present and high 
ideals for the future. Veneration is uplifting, reverence is 
upbuilding, admiration is a means of grace ; but let all these 
come under the inspiration that is divine, coadjutors of the 
greater glory of God. 

Among the counsellors prominent in our memory who out- 
lived Liie meridian days of the strength of this monthly meeting, 
sat that treasure store of information on the history and gene- 
alogy of Friends of these parts — that oracle of the doctrines, 
principles and precedents of the society, Newell Hoxie. When 
at length his head seat in this meeting had to be vacated for 
an arm chair at home, he was still resorted to by visitors as a 
Nestor for advice, and an authority for events of the past. The 
spots where every house had stood 200 years before, of those 
families who were first gathered into the Friends' meeting of 
Spring Hill, were definitely known to him. At one time he said 
to me, "John, sometimes on a bright Firstday forenoon in the 
summer when all my Friends are sitting in meeting and I 
am here alone, I love to look back on those first years of 1657 
and onward and trace in my mind's eye the several courses and 



14 

pathways through the fields or wood, which those eighteen 
families each took in wending their way up to meeting. And 
here in this chair I am wont to travel, as it were, with each of 
them, and sit down in meeting with them, and feel as if I had 
been carried back over those two centuries into their reverent 
waiting upon the Lord." And today also let us discover as 
never before that the past is not to be made light of more than 
the present, where it enlarges the heart in sympathy with the 
hearts of any day or time. 

Last summer from one of those spots, even from the cellar 
of its ancient house of 1687, I traced my course on a Firstday 
morning for some four miles, perhaps partly where my ancestry 
walked, up to this same Spring Hill and meeting. Planted by 
that same cellar of Edward Dillingham's* house, as tradition 
says, 270 years ago, still stands that tough and hardy pear tree, 
bearing a vigorous growth of leaves, but hollow enough for me 
to work my body into the inside of it. Standing there 
enveloped in so ancient and living a tree, and by the bank of 
that lovely upper lake, it was turned unto me for an aspiration 
to have a part in the tree of enduring life that is rooted in the 
banks of the water of life ; and within that symbolic tree my 
thoughts were well-nigh drawn into a psalm or hymn or 
spiritual song of the tree and water of life. Over the other 
side of the lake stood the homestead of another of our primitive 
families, the ancient house of the Wings, now reverently cared 
for by my cousin, Asa S. Wing, who was visiting it from 
Philadelphia. He had gathered into it a large reunion of near 
relatives from distant homes, whom to the number of fifteen 
or more, I later found had been wending their way through 
rural and woodland paths to this meeting house. For three 
miles on I found their white-robed group of sisters and cousins 
emerging from the trees, and joining with me the main high- 
way. Kepresentatives of another and general Wing reunion 
for America, which had been held the week before in Boston, 
had preceded us into the meeting house. It was found a large 
meeting, for these times, that had assembled. It became 
solemnized, and the nature of our mode of worship was 
acknowledged by several, both visitors and neighbors, and 
without a doubt realized. Before reaching the meeting it had 
dawned upon one of us that this summer afforded the 250th 
anniversary of the founding of the meeting. Such a discovery, 

*He was one of the "ten men of Saugus," who began the settlement 
of Sandwich in 1637. 



15 

then finding but momentary expression, as it has grown on us 
larger and larger would not let us be quiet till we could come 
together again in some commemoration like this — a commemo- 
ration of origins, lest we let them slip. "Remember the days 
of old, consider the years of many generations ; ask thy father 
and he will show thee ; thy elders and they will tell thee. For 
the Lord's portion is his people." (Dent, xxxii, 7-9). "And 
it shall be when thy son a.sketh thee in time to come, saying, 
What is this? that tliou shalt say unto him, By strength of hand 
the Lord brought us out from the house of bondage. (Ex. xv, 
14.) For he established a testimony and appointed a law which 
he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known 
unto tlieir children ; who should arise and declare them to their 
children." (Ps. Ixxviii, 5-6.) 

I have sometimes contemplated the possibility of some 
gifted poet composing a great epic which might be entitled 
"The Argonauts of the Woodhouse, " — a title not poetic till 
that which it covers is heard. More highly commissioned than 
Jason and his companions sailing in the ship Argo to a distant 
shore in search of the golden fleece, did Robert Fowler l)uihl 
by faith his little shi]) for the Lord's service, he knew not where, 
until eleven jiassengers bound in spirit for America embarked 
with him, as he wrote, "On my small vessel, the Woodhouse, 
but performed by the Lord like as he did Noah's ark wherein 
he shut up a few righteous persons and landed them safe even 
at the hill Ararat. ' ' They sailed in the first day of our sixth 
month, 1657. Among the eleven voyagers for a more precious 
than golden fleece, were Christopher Holder and John Copeland, 
the latter 28 years old. Christopher, 25 years of age, a young 
man of Avell-to-do family in England and of estimable culture, 
had tried to find entrance into INIassachusetts the year before. 
After eleven weeks of harsh imprisonment he and his com- 
])anions were sent l)ack. ^lary Fisher and Anne Austin had 
likewise been banished but a day or two before Christopher 
and his friends arrived. So this third Quaker invasion of a 
year later by Rol)ert Fowler's vessel, the Woodhouse, was the 
first that succeeded in getting for the Quakers a foothold. 
The captain's (juaint recital of their voyage could be turned 
into a wondrous chapter in our contemplated spiritual epic. 
To use the words of a descendant of Christopher Holder*, 



*In that valuable work, "The Holders of Holderness," by Charles 
Frederick Holder, LL. D. 



16 

'^Probably no more remarkable voyage was ever undertaken. 
The captain had never made an ocean trip before, knew 
nothing of navigation, confessing in his log that latitude and 
longitude were disregarded. The ship was sailed by the 
'word' which came to the ministers in their daily silent meet- 
ings, and as they lost but three days by foul weather, they 
kept the course with few exceptions." 

The vessel was guided to the harbor of New Amsterdam, 
now called New York, where five of the Friends decided to 
disembark and begin their ministry. The remaining six pro- 
ceeded on in the vessel to Newport. Thus having once been 
rebuffed from Massachusetts at its front door, they found 
entrance the next year by its back door, Rhode Island, and so 
on by way of Martha's Vineyard to Sandwich. On Sixth 
month 12th John Copeland wrote to his parents: "I and 
Christopher Holder are going to Martha's Vineyard, in obedi- 
ence to the will of God, which is our joy." Another letter 
says: "The Lord of hosts is with us, the shout of a king is 
amongst us. . . . The seed in America shall be as the 
sands of the sea." Landing at Martha's Vineyard on the 16th, 
they soon found they were not wanted by "the priest May- 
hew," and were taken across the sound. They found Sand- 
wich represented by a collection of log houses. In one of these 
they found shelter. "Their arrival," says Sewell, "was hailed 
with feelings of satisfaction by many who were sincere seekers 
after heavenly riches, but who had long been burdened by a 
lifeless ministry and dead forms of religion." Theirs were the 
first meetings held in New England by Quakers. So Christo- 
pher, having touched Boston the year before, is denominated 
"the pioneer Quaker minister in New England." A little 
later he wrote the first Declaration of the faith of Friends 
which had appeared, whether in England or in America. A 
good part of this is still preserved. A synopsis of his minis- 
try of suffering indicates that he spent four years and a half in 
prisons, three days without food, received some 613 lashes, 
had his books burned and his right ear cut off, was banished 
at the age of 28, and died in England, aged 60, not without 
imprisonments there. 

Records of sufferings may be produced of most of the 
remaining nine, men and women, voyagers of the Woodhouse, 
in their sowings of the seed of the Friends' doctrine from New 
Hampshire to the Carolinas. These all were the pioneers, but 



17 

we are interested in Sandwich today as the first soil in which 
the seed got root, and in this Spring Hill, and especially in the 
old William Allen house, had it not in recent years been taken 
down, as a house which Amos Otis said "should be regarded 
by the Friends as their 'Mecca,' and be preserved as a monu- 
ment of the olden time." 

This William Allen, for harboring Friends' Meetings, was 
fined time after time, till, it is said, he had little left but his 
house and farm. All his cows being taken away, his neighbors 
gave him another cow. The sheriff came and took this away, 
on his continuing to accommodate Quaker meetings; and the 
last thing the officer could find to take was a brass kettle. "If 
thou takes this away," said the wife, "there will be nothing 
that we can have to serve ourselves with food. ' ' Yet he took 
it, and William Allen 's wife said : ' ' The time will come when 
thou wilt have to be served by me with food from this same 
kettle. ' ' And so it proved, for George Barlow passed his latter 
days as a drunken beggar, many times helped with food at 
Priscilla Allen's door. William Allen was not the greatest 
sufferer. "Edward Perry, who was wealthy, a man who had 
been well educated, the first clerk of the Monthly Meeting, 
suffered more. Robert Harper had his house and lands and 
all that he owned taken, and suffered many cruel imprisonments 
and punishments. Thomas Johnson, a poor weaver, was stripped 
of all he had." Others, pioneer preachers of Friends' doctrine, 
were branded, or scourged on their naked backs as they walked 
at a cart's tail, or were branded with a hot iron. 

Strenuous times that try men's souls to their center serve 
to drive them to lay hold on central truth. They press the 
honest souls into truth's very life, to know it and to hold it 
unflinchingly. The 13,562 imprisonments of Friends in Eng- 
land during Christopher Holder's lifetime, the nearly 400 
deaths in prison, the distraints and hardships forced at the 
hands of the reluctant and more merciful town of Sandwich 
by their government at the north to inflict upon our sons of the 
morning, disclose to us the fact that "there were giants in 
those days" because they helieved soinetlijiig ; and then a 
gigantic faith could stand a gigantic suffering. 

And "this is the victory that overcomes the world, even 
our faith." The Friends by their passive resistance tired out. 
wore out, and shamed out the arm of persecution and the 
ordinances that were against them, and by their sufferings 



18 

completed the purchase of liberty of conscience for their whole 
country. The blood of the four martyrs on Boston Common 
sealed the victory for religious liberty in America. 

Whereas, had the Quakers resorted to armed defence or 
carnal resistance, they would speedily have been vdped out o£ 
existence. So. naturally, would the early Christians have been 
exterminated, had they not in their steady testimony during 
their first three hundred years, dechired : "I am a Christian, 
and therefore I cannot fight." 

If the principles of worship and life, and their essential 
consetiuences in practice which were proclaimed and suffered 
for hy our founders in their day are not fundamental truth 
now, tliey were not fundamental truth then ; and square honesty 
recjuires that if we disown tlieir standing as erroneous, we 
should disown their name from off our shoulders. But if we 
profess their principles as true, the same honest}^ requires that 
we accept their conse([uences in ])ractice as true. 

But this cherishing of (Mitward monuments is not alto- 
gether a human weakness. A thrc^ad of good runs through 
all the Hienioi-ials of good 1o which men cling. But the 
Friends are made Friends by a better monument than things 
that perish; for as the word monument means simply that 
whi( li l)rings to remembrance, the dependence of the Friend is 
on that Spirit whom Christ promised, that He should bring all 
things to our remembrance, whatsoever He had said unto us, 
who alone can speak to our condition. The spirit of Christ 
is the "golden fleece" which clothes the sheep of his pasture. 
Our voyage of discovery of enduements of the golden fleece 
from more to more, is our walk of obedience. 

I believe that close adherence to the same principle that 
built us up as a religious society, to be a light in the world 
as in the former days, is the only principle that can rebuild the 
society, — I mean, on which the Head of the church would re- 
build it, — namely, simple and uncalculating "conformity to the 
inunediate and perceptible influence of the Spirit of Truth in 
the heart." That M'hich made Quakers can remake them. Com- 
plaiiiing that by neglecting this the Society of Friends has be- 
come something else, or been reduced to a handful, will not 
reproduce it. And so we can best commend ourselves to "the 
word of his grace which is able to build us up." 

Accordingly we have not come all this distance to preach 
the funeral sermon of a quarterly, or of a monthly, meeting of 



19 

the Society of Friends. But whatever may become of these, or 
even should they become nullifiers of the principles for which 
the lirst monthly meeting was planted, it were impossible to 
preach the funeral sermon of Quakerism itself. That must live 
so long as the Holy Spirit lives among men. For that is what 
Quakerism is— yesterday, today and forever — obedience to the 
movings of the Spirit of Truth. It began when first the Spirit 
of God moved upon the face of the waters, and said, "Let there 
be light!" And there v/as light, because there was obedience. 
Light itself is a mode of motion in that upon which the spirit of 
life moved and moves — the ethereal fluid in its special vibra- 
tions trembling at the word of the Lord. And the spirit that 
is in man, which George Fox called upon to "tremble at the 
word of the Lord, ' ' gets the light of its vibrations by that same 
obedience which is so appropriately called Quakerism. And 
while we never welcomed the name, yet the scoffers who caught 
up that expression of George Fox to dub us "Quakers" only 
adorned us, and "builded better than they knew." Trembling 
and moving at the inspeaking word of the Lord, the spirits of 
Quakers of his word have been made illuminants and electrifiers 
"in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation among whom 
they shone as lights in the world, holding forth the word 
of truth;" all this being comprehended in the gospel experience, 
that "God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, 
hath shined in our hearts, to give us the light of the knowledge 
of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ." Organizations 
I say, may perish or assume other forms, but Quakerism will 
never die so long as "there is a spirit in man and the inspiration 
of the Almighty giveth them understanding," which they obedi- 
ently, apply to the duties of their day. 

Christopher Holder ! ! — let each one of us be just that — 
Christ-bearer, Christ-holder! and the restoration of Quaker- 
ism ic its own Society is assured. "He that hath the Son hath 
life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." 



PD 



% o 




'* .^ 



c°\< 



v^ 



■^f*. 



' A\\^//A ° -5-^^^ 




'f * ^ «?■, •'^ 

.0 ^^ 










■^0 



5 "1% 



* G 



% 



.^^^ 



,-V 










"y ■ .^m FLA. v^ .-i*:;^:* <=i 







,^ ... 




